hypersongs

Shackleton

The Lancashire producer behind Skull Disco, whose "Blood on My Hands" became the label's biggest record through a long Ricardo Villalobos remix.

Skull Disco

Sam Shackleton is an English producer from Lancashire. He played in punk bands as a teenager and later in a dancehall duo with Earl Fontainelle called Vengeance Tenfold, and came into dubstep and grime through the FWD>> club nights in London, going with Appleblim (Laurie Osborne), Necta Selecta and Engine Room. He began producing on a computer in 2003, and his first release was "Stalker" on Mordant Music in 2004. He plays live with a laptop set in Ableton, an approach Kode 9 first suggested, as he told the Quietus.

In 2005 he and Appleblim founded Skull Disco; SKULL001 paired Appleblim's "Mystikal Warrior" with Shackleton's "I Am Animal". The label ended after ten vinyl releases in 2008, Shackleton saying the idea runs out, and he moved to Berlin. The catalogue includes SKULL003, the EP Soundboy's Nuts Get Ground Up Proper (Spanish Wikipedia's mirror titles it Bones), with "Blood on My Hands", "Naked" and "Hypno Angel"; SKULL005 with "Hamas Rule"; SKULL006 with "You Bring Me Down"; and SKULL010, Soundboy's Suicide Note (September 2008).

After Skull Disco

His debut album, Three EPs, came out on Perlon in 2009, followed by Fabric 55 (2010); he founded Woe to the Septic Heart! in November 2010 with Man on a String. Pinch and Shackleton came out on Honest Jon's in 2011, with The Drawbar Organ and Music for the Quiet Hour EPs in 2012, Freezing Opening Thawing (2014), Devotional Songs (2016, with Ernesto Tomasini), Sferic Ghost Transmits and Behind the Glass with Anika (2017), Primal Forms (2020, with Zimpel), Departing Like Rivers (2021), The Scandal of Time (2023) and Euphoria Bound (2026, AD 93). Devotional Songs appeared on year-end lists of the Wire and the Quietus.

He names Coil's Music to Play in the Dark, Johnny Cash's Bible readings, which gave the label its name, and Nigel Barley's anthropology as influences, and also cites Can, Kraftwerk, Faust and Amon Duul II. He told the Stranger that African, Arabic or Indian touches in his sound are not deliberate. Resident Advisor described Skull Disco in December 2010 as one of a new generation of hugely influential UK labels.

Albums

Songs

  • Blood on My Hands Soundboy's Nuts Get Ground Up Proper

    A Skull Disco track that Ricardo Villalobos remixed at nearly twenty minutes, the label's biggest hit.

Sources

  1. Shackleton (musician), Wikipedia
  2. Skull Disco, Wikipedia
  3. Shackleton interview, The Quietus
  4. Shackleton interview, Sparse (2011-04-07)